“From the video it is quite clear that your vehicle veered from the inside lane and it carried all the way across to the hard shoulder and then into, to some degree, the emergency refuge area.”

“Mr Wootton was in the process of arranging to tow the stricken vehicle away and was kneeling down, protruding a little to the off side of the vehicle, when your vehicle swept past. You hit him. It is miraculous he was not even more seriously injured or possibly killed.

“You only missed hitting both vehicles by what appeared to be a matter of inches.”

The judge said Mr Wootton still suffered from pain and added that whether he would be able to return to his previous employment as an emergency recovery driver was open to question because of the “terrifying ordeal he underwent.”

He added that Poolman, who did not realise he had hit the patrol man, must have been distracted.

Mark Phillips, prosecuting at Birmingham Crown Court , said that on April 28 last year Mr Wootton had been called to a breakdown between junctions six and seven.

He towed the vehicle from the hard shoulder to the refuge area and had been between it and his van and was attaching safety lights.

Poolman, who was driving a low loader towing a dumper truck, veered in an arc, and struck the patrol man before carrying on.

Another driver who stopped at the scene described Mr Wootton, who was on the floor, “screaming in agony.”

X rays revealed the fractures and he was discharged from hospital the following day.

Mr Phillips said the lorry was traced to a depot in Shifnal and Poolman, who had a previous conviction for causing death by reckless driving in 1970, was arrested.

Laura Culley, defending, said “It is a mystery to him to this day how this occurred.”

She said he had not been speeding or tired and that he had undergone a medical assessment which had not revealed any problem.

PC David Gaunt, who led the hunt for the hit-and-run driver said: “Without a registration number, we knew it would be almost impossible to bring the driver to justice.

“The only lead we had was a branded catering van seen travelling directly behind Poolman’s lorry.

“We knew it was a long shot, but we decided to contact the company and ask them if any of their drivers had witnessed the incident and crucially, taken down the registration.

“Astonishingly, one of them contacted us to say he had done and from there, we were able to trace Poolman.

“The recovery driver is extremely lucky to be alive and the consequences of Poolman’s complete lack of attention that day could have been a lot worse.

“The victim remains in a lot of pain and has been unable to work since the crash. The impact of his injuries will stay with him for the rest of his life and he worries about what kind of work he will be able to do in the future.”